Nothing signals the start of the season more than the smell of a barbeque, the crack of a baseball bat, or a politician touring the Arctic. Yes, just as reliable this time of year as the local grocer putting out citronella candles, are environmentalists observing a melting Arctic and blaming global warming.
Our ancestors had a term for the warming these politicians are observing; it’s called “summer.” Beyond being great political photo ops, these Arctic trips are really cool. Most Americans don’t get to afford an Arctic cruise until their retirement, but if you’re a politician ready to repeat the dire global warming predictions, you get a first class cabin on a research trawler.
Hillary Clinton threw out the first pitch Saturday when she toured the Arctic and claimed she saw melting:
Returning from a tour of the Arctic coastline aboard a Norwegian research trawler with scientists and government officials, Clinton told reporters that she learned “many of the predictions about warming in the Arctic are being surpassed by the actual data.”
“That was not necessarily surprising but sobering,” she said.
After all, who knows more about ice than Hilary Clinton? (Rumor has it that when she first opened her mouth to ask Bill about Monica Lewinsky, the White House furnace clicked on.)
Unfortunately, the truth about the melting is a little bit different. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center ice cover, as of May 3, was “near average.”
Since then, it has receded a little, but it is just slightly below average and just a little bit more than last year.
Sure, there was melting where she was at (north of Scandinavia), but if you look at the entire Arctic, it’s either equal to or exceeds the average everywhere else
It’s kind of like the chestnut about a blind man feeling an elephant’s trunk and claiming an elephant looks like a snake.
It seems the REAL snakes look more like donkeys.